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If you want to deeply listen to someone else, you first have to be clear on what your inner experience is. You have to connect to the present moment and let your thoughts, judgments and feelings come into your awareness while not attaching to them.

The miracle of listening this way allows the talker to unfold into their own brilliance. Without letting our busy-body minds interfere with their process, an invitation is extended so that Truth may enter.

When Truth enters, healing occurs.

The story and its circumstances are not altered, yet the talker is allowed an opportunity for inner transformation if they are ready for it.

However, as a listener, if we are invested in validating, interjecting and sharing our own ideas about how this story ‘should be’, we block the flow of the miracle.

Yesterday, I mindfully listened to a woman who shared a harrowing and unjust life story. Instead of responding with my words or gestures, I let the story sweep over me. I saw inside myself the judgments, labels and rising tides of emotions.

These were mine. Not hers.

But because I waited through that uncomfortable urge to say something, the story slowly shifted to immense beauty. While it included heartbreak, the lights of resilience started to shine through it.

My labels and judgments were soon replaced by sheer awe.

When awe enters, it is easy to detach and yield with an open heart to the Love that lives inside struggle.

Where else could we yield? What miracles await us if we simply let go?

As you connect to your True Nature, you will find life does not fit you the same. Changes often start on a subconscious level. Subtle layers are added to and subtracted from your everyday world. Then, after enough of these layers push and pull against your normal experience, the tides shift and sweep away what no longer serves you.

This means you may have to let some people in your life go.

Not everyone, but some.

Some may be angry with you for changing. They may try to use guilt to keep you where they are.

You are not better for needing to go. They are not worse for having to stay.

Both different points on the path of awakening.

I used to mistakenly attribute others leaving my life to deep, unchangeable personal flaws. My first error was believing that my wholeness was contingent on others’ acceptance of me. My second was not knowing that I was projecting my own non-acceptance of myself onto others. What I saw in them was what I was too afraid to admit.

I did not accept myself.

Then, this too, started to change and shift.

Now, I see that as a personal self, acceptance in a traditional sense is unobtainable. Personal selves are messy. We will never be free of mistakes.

What remains True for Me, what holds me together at the seams is within me.

There is such Love within, personal selves and stories dissipate in this awareness. It makes being human bearable.

As humans, we arrive in our experience believing we are separate from our Source and from each other. Some remember in an instant and are fully immersed in a sustained Truth that is unshakeable. For the remainder of us on the path of awakening, remembering our True State comes to us in stages.

The first stage is an undoing of the illusory constructs of our personal identity. This is where an internal shift begins and will not be stopped until our egos are completely undone. Once you step beyond the small self, you can never fully return to it.

Then, in the second stage, you are caught in the uncertainty of not knowing what is real and what is not. This can last for weeks, years, decades or sometimes a lifetime. Give yourself compassion if this is where you are. This is the most painful part of Remembering. I have lived it. It almost broke me apart into a million pieces. Looking back I understand breaking down to near extinction was the point. My identity had to be stripped away to nothing so I could experience Truth.

I am now entering the third phase of Remembering. I am still a small self but I am no longer afraid of Truth. Each day I am more and more willing to turn inward to the astounding Beauty within me. I have less fear. I have more peace. The small self is healing in ways big and small.

When I am immersed in this Peace, I know Love like the back of my hand. It holds me, it heals me, it sets me free.

I have only begun the real work of Awakening. My purpose is to keep Remembering as much as I am able and share this Knowing with anyone who is ready to listen.

In the middle of the night, the quiet that settles over us is meant to inspire us. It is meant to Love us back to Truth.

The body awakens and the mind races unsure why sleep escapes us. Logic seems to work in our favor. It appears to be the route we must travel for peace. It tries to work through our problems and understand the source of our wakefulness.

But it does not help.

Logic cannot comfort in the dark. It can only dance us away from what is Whole and True within us.

Before you believe everything you think, breathe into where your words meet your mind.

At this crux, if only a sliver of light escapes its way Home, follow it with everything you are.

There, beyond, is the garden full of sparkling blooms waiting for you to gather them up in your empty arms.